I legitimately did not believe it was possible for this to happen. There’s always a hateful minority but I believe people as a whole are good. How did this happen?
I have the same confusion about the election. Why would anyone vote for that disgusting predating geriatric fraudster incompetent convicted fellon who tanked any business he ever got into, is beyond me. But I’m not American so I can only hypothesize.
Either people don’t care or maybe thats what they like? Either way, this hatered is fully ingrained into America and it comes out in fascism and some kind of religious death cultism. This will ripple across the world for a long time.
NPR was just discussing this a few minutes ago.
The Democrats put the majority of their push behind abortion thinking that would be the turn out vote and it didn’t seem to be.
More people voted for Trump because of the economy based on exit polling and (surprisingly) more women voted for him this time as well.
There was also more votes coming from younger people who hadn’t been through a recession before and were just basically voting ‘opposite party’ because they were tired of their money going nowhere. The voting trend was something that had been seen in several other countries recently.
it’s really easy to exploit the worse parts of human psychology en masse when you have money, and its incredibly hard to undo that
I’ll be very interested to see the objective agreed upon postmordem and what can be done (if anything) to save the patient going forward. This is pretty damning confirmation that the humans are not okay, Trump is like the virus government guy from the Matrix
Anyone blaming anything other than the Kamala campaign are dead wrong. She ran the worst campaign you could run with the billion dollars and initial support she was gifted.
The election was hers to lose and she spent her last days campaigning doing sketches on SNL, and Waltz going on AOC streams and Jason Bateman podcasts.
They had infinitely more resources and 0 strategy other than get traditional celebrity endorsements. It is simply the campaign’s fault.
I don’t think you’re wrong, but what could she have done better?
I never expected that Trump had a chance, but this is the first time he’s won the popular vote too. Something really turned people off of Harris, and I’m curious what it was.
She was 2 minorities at the same time.
She could have held to her no-fracking stance, broke with Biden over Gaza, not promised to build a border wall, or not promised to put a Republican in the cabinet. Any one of these might have made the difference
It’s wild to me that when she realized she had to somewhat distance herself from Biden she chose to say she’d have a republican in her cabinet. Not something about helping the working class more, or not supplying and funding a genocide that’s incredibly unpopular with what should be her base.
Stuff like that along with “having the most lethal military” and campaigning with Cheney alienated leftists, student, and Muslim voters which all could have been easy wins.
Economically people don’t feel better under Biden than they did 4 years ago which while the inflation largely isn’t his fault she still needed to meaningfully project she would be different than him to get working class voters and she didn’t effectively do that since she wasn’t pushing a populist message.
She clearly doesn’t know how to campaign well (pretty sure I heard she had Clinton staffers giving advice to her campaign lol) but that shouldn’t be a surprise since she was the first candidate to drop out of the 2020 primary.
She aligned herself with (1) the most unpopular republican vice president and warmonger of our generation, (2) did not distance herself from an unpopular president, (3) did not on any level run a non-traditional media campaign all while watching the Trump campaign triple down on it.
The actual true answer is that it’s only her fault given the opportunity, but she in fact should never have been given the opportunity—Biden should have prepared to be a one term president and give years of lead time for a competent candidate to challenge the very obvious and inevitable campaign Trump ran.
Trump vote totals is sideways. Hers went down 12MM from 2020.
I live in a red state and vote blue. Trump is bad for the country. But the silver lining is that the Dems are now forced to have self reflection that they refused to have four years ago, and hopefully field a legitimately viable candidate in 2028.
but what could she have done better?
She could’ve ran policies popular with her base instead of ignoring it and cozying up to Republicans. She could’ve made real campaign promises instead of just repeating “I’m not Trump” ad infinitum. She could’ve, you know, actually campaigned instead of repeating the mistakes of 2016.
What policies would have been better to promote?
I felt that Trump had fewer campaign promises and just as much “Kamala bad”, and it didn’t stop him from winning.
Trump has never been able policies; Trump is a culture war candidate who says what his voters want to hear. Comparing him to dem candidates is a mistake.
No, they obviously play by different rules. But they’re in and we’re out, and we need to figure out why or it’s going to stay that way.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/08/politics/kamala-harris-key-issues-dg/
Hardly I’m not Trump ad infinitum. Not her fault you can’t be bothered to listen.
So I read the article and… Uh… Not convinced. Her platform was vague “nothing will fundamentally change” slop. I mean Biden’s term did have many good initiatives that it would be nice to keep, but yeah this ain’t it.
However, she has not provided many details on her plans,
We call that in plain English “not making promises”. I mean hell she couldn’t even commit to keeping Lina Khan.
I don’t agree that she had no platform other than I’m not Trump, but she certainly shifted right as the race went on and lost more and more support as she did it
Imagine being insane enough to type this out when Trump’s campaign is “they’re eating the pets.”
Are you listening to yourself? Trump is crazy/senile. Many of the people that support him know this, but will continue to support him because he appoints the ® judges they want. He could be the craziest person on the planet, but his supporters just won’t care as long he can be relied upon to deliver the courts.
A month ago, I though Harris had a good chance at winning. But as we got closer to election day, ads, headlines, and commentators focused more and more on how bad Trump is, rather than what she stands for or promises. That’s why she lost. No one was going to change the minds of any Trump voters. She needed to get undecided/swing/unmotivated voters to vote FOR her, rather than vote against Trump. “We’re not going back”? Fine, I don’t want that either, but instead of repeating that over and over, how about you remind people what it means for a Harris administration to move us forward? You can’t do that because you’re keeping us in bed with Israel and people are concerned about the implications from that? Yeah, she was going to lose to the “pet-eating” douche.
Say whatever you want about Trump and his supporters, and sure, there’s plenty to disagree with. But, they had someone they were voting FOR, and that means more than being scared of the alternative.
This is a complete deflection from the primary point: Kamala ran a campaign that would have done well in 2012. Not 2024. She had no strategy, and in fact did everything she could to not differentiate or excite despite ample historical examples from Obama to Trump on how to do so.
Both sides used regime whores of hollycreep variety.
Political whores cant hold office for longer them a term is indicative of general dissatisfaction of the population but there is no third choice so they can just vote other guy.
But yeah DNC komissars are brain dead entire kamala debucle shoes that they learned nothing from 2016. Brain dead boomers are out of touch. Zealots have on politics subs are useful clowns but that usseful haha
She ran the worst campaign you could run with the billion dollars and initial support she was gifted.
Biden’s was worse
It’s still Kamala’s fault she lost, but she wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Relentless conservative propaganda made it a close race and Harris blew it by cozying up to Republicans and using kids gloves with Trump.
I think Harris played it better than anyone had so far with handling Trump. I think her fatal mistep was believing there were hordes of rightwing never trumpers who could be swayed. She had so much momentum when she first stepped in and people thought she’d be further left than Biden, she pivoted further right than him and probably got less votes. Being a POC woman certainly didn’t help either.
She had so much momentum when she first stepped in and people thought she’d be further left than Biden, she pivoted further right than him and probably got less votes.
This is exactly how I saw the campaign go, and how my enthusiasm died when she got buddy buddy with Cheney. By the time I voted it was solidly back to ‘against Republicans’ instead of having any hope that the Dems had learned anything.
I don’t have the energy to try and sway people to do the right thing, but voting is easy enough that I’ll probably keep doing that. I should probably just stop paying attention to Dem campaigns though because it sure makes taking the time to vote for them harder each decade. Republicans trashing the country should be enough of a reminder.
I think attacking Trump’s rhetoric is not a winning strategy. People are fatigued by it and it just falls onto deaf ears.
Also people are dumb and selfish. If you talk about democracy, they don’t care and/or understand what it means. All they care about is money in the wallet.
What proof do you have that cozying up to Republicans hurt her.
How did she handle Trump with kid gloves?
What proof do you have that cozying up to Republicans hurt her.
No proof, just the obvious fact that cozying up to your enemies is generally a negative. How is propping up Liz Cheney going to encourage voters who oppose Republicans?
How did she handle Trump with kid gloves?
She didn’t call him ‘convicted felon Donald Trump’. She didn’t ask him how he was looking forward to his sentencing. She didn’t ask him if he wasn’t going to let him grab her by the pussy just because he was famous. She didn’t point out that he stared at the sun during an eclipse. She didn’t point out that he nominated three SCOTUS judges that overturned Roe v Wade despite claiming he supported it. She didn’t blatantly call out his lies directly, she didn’t point out that he couldn’t focus on the topic and sounds like the sundowning jackass that he is.
She took the high road, as Dems tend to do, and not be direct and clear in their criticism of Republicans. They just softball disagreement instead of stating “That is a lie and you know it.”
Weird because I’m pretty sure only Trump voters are responsible for electing Trump.
He got effectively the same amount of votes as 2020.
She got 10-12MM LESS than Biden in 2020.
They simply failed while Trump went sideways.
It is not safe to assume that if 12 million more people voted, they all would have voted for Kamala.
It is safe to say that if 70 million fewer people voted for Trump, Trump doesn’t win.
Regardless of how many people did or didn’t vote for Harris, or Stein, or RFK, or whoever, that doesn’t change the fact that 70 million Americans saw Trump and decided “yes, more of that please”.
Not to mention that GOP has taken Senate and likely to hold House. This is speaking to the wants of the average American voter. They spoke loud. They want this.
I wonder how the Joe Rogan bros who voted for this guy will like it when Project 2025 makes porn illegal. I bet 99% of the dipshits don’t even know that is a thing.
This will probably be an unpopular take, but this my best guess at why Trump won.
On the election coverage I was watching (ABC), the biggest point they kept coming back to were questions of if people thought that the economy is better now vs when Trump was in office, and if people feel like they’re better or worse off financially that they were during Trump years. If I remember right, the poll data they showed had twice as many people say that things were worse economy/financially then they were during Trump era, vs people who thought things were better financially now.
I know that matches with my personal experience, I live in a rural area, and my company primarily does work for other small businesses. The Trump years had a huge amount of negative news, but my business grew a lot over those years. In comparison, the last 4 years have been very stagnant in growth. We’ve picked up some new clients, but many of the small businesses we did business with have closed down or had to sell to new owners. I wouldn’t say our business is doing worse, but everything costs more and our company profit/wages haven’t kept up. And I know it’s worse for a lot other businesses, at least from seeing how many I’ve seen go out of business.
A lot of the economic troubles came from Covid, so it’s not fair to place them all on the Biden administration. But I think a lot of the country is unhappy financially right now, and they think Trump has a better chance of changing that. I’m guessing a lot of the “undecided voters” that decided the election picked the option they thought would help them financially over all other considerations.
“I’m unhappy, financially so I’m going to vote for the felon, racist, sexist, fascist” still doesn’t add up.
What does add up is that enough of the American people didn’t know or fully understand just how much of a racist, sexist, fascist and total scumbag Trump really is. Or they heard about his misdeeds and absolutely abhorrent statements/views but didn’t believe it; “fake news”.
They had all the time in the world to just pay attention or ya know, just look shit up but they didn’t do those things. Now those very same people are going to be surprised AF that their friends and family are being rounded up, arrested, detained, and/or deported. They’ll say they had no idea that Trump planned to do that or that “they didn’t think he’d actually do it.”
They suck. There’s no excuse at this point. Just like the article suggests.
Then there’s his actual supporters who like the awful things he says and nod in agreement. If anything, this election has revealed that your Republican neighbors absolutely are horrible human beings. Again: If someone is still a Republican at this point they’re saying to the world that they’re in tacit agreement with these things. They share the same values as the Republican party and Trump is the Republican party platform at this point.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
People also have the memory of a fucking brain dead goldfish, and don’t even have the mental capacity to realize that Trump’s tax plan is what we are currently under, and have been under, since Biden took office.
I suspect US economy is in a much worse state than it’s obvious just looking at the numbers. Most of my contact with Americans is with relatively well-off people working in the tech industry. And even they are feeling serious financial constraints. I can’t imagine how the rest is doing.
Both times Trump won the nomination and ran against women, he won. The only time he ran against a man, he lost.
Clearly the Democrats should avoid nominating women until the electorate is ready for one.
Lots of reasons. Left-leaning Canadian’s take:
- Biden/Kamala have acted against the American majority for months now in Gaza. This isn’t a sabotage take, it’s as close to fact as can be determined of national attitude. Look at my post history before you accuse me of “both sides”. A lot of Dems and especially young people are very vocal about hating support of the ethnic cleansing of Occupied Palestinian Territory. Millions of people chose to stomach it until the election, but I think other millions felt unrepresented and betrayed by protest suppression and bipartisan condemnation.
- I don’t want to insult anyone, but even moderately detailed political plans may not work in America. Trump’s campaign was run on vague promises and angry rhetoric that was emotionally engaging. Clearly people don’t know how much Trump’s policies like tariffs are going to hurt them personally, but like promises of a strong “America for Americans”. Kamala ran on a detailed platform that took effort to understand and clearly it failed to motivate enough voters.
- “Try to please everyone and you will please no one.” Instead of solidifying support and inspiring hope among the Dem base, Kamala’s campaign assumed their support due to fear of Trump and went after undecideds and Republicans. Republicans aren’t going to switch and many undecideds are that way due to apathy.
- No Dem primary meant people couldn’t choose the candidate they might actually want to support. They were given Biden then Harris without being asked for input.
- Related to that: Biden’s campaign soured voters, and Kamala wasn’t able to climb out of the hole left to her. His low approval rating didn’t help given Kamala felt like a younger version of more of the same.
- Misinformation and propaganda by foreign and domestic right-wingers kept a lot of people from switching sides.
It looks like Trump still got ~70 millions vote, like before, but Harris got 66M while Biden got 81M, so the problem looks like Democrats failed to get people to vote.
Maybe because Democrats were often lefties, workers, unionized, lower salary, lower education, etc, and they do not recognize themselves anymore in the Democratic party.
We had the same things in France with the “gauche caviar”, basically the “caviar left”, all traditional factories workers who voted Socialist for decades, didn’t recognized themselves in this caviar left so voted elsewhere like right-wing, go figure…
The average lifespan is like 70-80+ years. All the shitheads have plenty of time to pass down their hatred and humans tend to be tribal so easily willing to accept propaganda that blames ‘others’.
The old trope about the racist uncle is relatable because of how many racist people there are.
At this point we can only really guess. It’ll probably be days or weeks before people can dig through the voting data and do substantive post-mortems on the 2024 campaign. Th economy seems to have played a big part. People are angry at high prices and they naturally punish the incumbent party even if the President doesn’t realistically control how much eggs and gas cost. Along with that it’s looking like there was a collapse in Democratic turnout in the Rust Belt while Republican turnout stayed steady, handing Trump narrow wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It also looks like the Harris campaign’s bet on Republicans who didn’t vote for Trump in the primary breaking for her failed to pay off.
Trump got about the same amount of votes, but Harris got way fewer than Biden did. It wasn’t hate that won the election, but apathy that lost it.
There are lots of reasons this happened. Fascism is very popular (as a whole we are not good), voter suppression is functioning as planned, destabilizing education from preschool to university makes people more susceptible to fear mongers and racism, vast amounts of corporate and wealthy influence on elections who favor the party of deregulation, the DNC shifting right instead of left, etc etc etc.
Less “fascism is popular” and more “people are so desperate for SOMEBODY actually promising change that they’ll vote for anyone offering it, no matter if it’s good or bad.”
Status quo politics is pretty much dead in the water and arguably has been since 2016. People don’t want “I’ll keep everything on a steady course,” they want someone who sounds like they’re going to take charge, and Trump provided that.
Also social media sequestering people in cozy filter bubbles that distort reality.
Social media, or more precisely, algorithms designed only to create ever growing engagement by feeding into confirmation bias and only showing you stuff you like, have destroyed the ability of critical thinking in a majority of people.
This doesn’t only apply to the right spectrum either, as evidenced by all the “hopium” articles here and on r/politics that were trying to construct a blue win or even a blue wave when all polls pointed to a Trump advantage. I had fallen into that trap myself. And everybody was also smugly making fun of the articles in r/conservative predicting the same thing for Trump. Well, turns out they were right.
imo propaganda. memeship. education policies.
propaganda is easy because all the mainstream media is about Trump doing unhinged things. Free PR.
memeship is likely a product of propaganda where the internet regurgitates controversial topics to milk more engagement.
As others have said, a lot of people already have almost zero critical thinking and the elections are just a test of who they remember the most.
